The Death Penalty in Japan
A new special issue of the Zeitschrift für Japanisches Recht/Journal of Japanese Law (ZJapanR/J.Japan.L.) presents a treatise on the Japanese system of capital punishment by Makoto Ida, one of Japan’s leading authorities on criminal law, in which he examines the meaning of retribution, the predominant theory of criminal justice in Japan. The ZJapanR/J.Japan.L. is a joint publication of the Institute and the German-Japanese Association of Jurists (DJJV).
The death penalty remains a viable form of punishment in Japanese criminal law, rare but nonetheless regularly imposed and carried out. In this treatise, Ida gives a comprehensive picture of the current legal landscape along with an account, centred around the belief in retributive justice, of the reasons why a majority of Japanese society thinks it cannot do without capital punishment. From the perspective of fundamental theories of criminal law, the author demonstrates a range of problems with the practice of allowing the individual feelings of crime victims and their surviving loved ones to have a significant influence at sentencing and pleads instead for a “theory of punishment as retribution for violating norms”. He also contends with some of the typical arguments encountered in the general discourse, for example the idea that the death penalty cannot be scientifically shown to have a deterrent effect. The book resonated with both lay as well as professional audiences when it was published in Japan in 2022. It was translated into German by Prof. Dr. Matthias K. Scheer.
Prof. Dr. Makoto Ida is a law professor at Chuo University and professor emeritus at Keio University in Tokyo. He is also currently an advisor to the Supreme Court's Judicial Training Institute and has been chairman of the “Roundtable on the Death Penalty” commission since February 2024. He earned a doctorate from the law faculty at the University of Cologne and has received honorary doctorates from Saarland University and the Friedrich Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. He has also received the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s Franz von Siebold Award and the Eugen and Ilse Seibold Award from the German Research Foundation as well as a Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
The ZJapanR /J.Japan.L. is an international periodical for lawyers and jurists interested in Japanese law. Its goal is to serve as a forum for the many different methods and approaches to every facet of the Japanese legal order.
Image: © Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law
